I’m Michael L. Thompson. L is for Lindus. Lindus was my great grandfather’s name. Now my grandson is named Lindus (Ari Lindus) and so the generations go on and this makes me happy.

I am a father, husband, grandfather, poet, and cancer survivor. I find joy in being outside, breathing the fresh air, seeing animals, hearing the quiet, and in simple, grounding rituals like feeding the birds through a Vermont winter. I love hiking in Wales, snowshoeing in central Vermont, and watching the Gators win at football. I’m deeply curious about people and the lives they lead, and I’m drawn to their stories. At home, I cook most of our meals, guided by a love of nurturing, of preparing whole foods, and supporting our local co-op. At the heart of it all is a desire to make a difference and to leave the world a better place for my children and grandchildren.

I grew up in a Florida college town where higher education was the only real industry. My father was a graduate research professor who also practiced law, and my mother was a brilliant nurse. My memories of that time are sensory and vivid—the smell of magnolias, summer rain, and cypress knees rising from dark water; catching snakes; going to football games with my dad; Steve Spurrier’s chin strap; and gathering around the family television to watch The Ed Sullivan Show, Peter Pan, and The Wizard of Oz.

In school, I was student body president, yearbook photographer, and a member of the Frisbee club. At nineteen, I learned transcendental meditation. I studied at the University of Florida, Cornell College, and the University of Iowa, where I discovered poetry and art. Summers took me far from home—to Yellowstone and Homer, Alaska—and I backpacked through Europe, widening my sense of the world and my place in it.

When I was twenty-four, my first child was born. I left college to earn a living and raise a family, and I loved being a father. Over the years, our family grew, shaping the course of my life in ways I could never have planned but have always been grateful for.

I read The Seven Laws of Money, Michael Phillips’ collaboration with Salli Raspberry and Stuart Brand of Whole Earth Catalog fame. It wasn’t a typical finance book. It talked about right livelihood, community, purpose—the idea that money itself is neither good nor bad, but its use reveals who we are.

Early on I was starting to think about alignment— that every decision about living, earning, spending, caring, growing, cooking, saving, investing, and giving is part of a larger story about the world we want to live in and create for our children and the planet.

At twenty-six I co-founded an organic food distribution cooperative. We believed in “changing capitalism” long before those words were fashionable. Our motto—food for people, not for profit—was earnest, but we built a competitive, successful enterprise. Without business school or financial credentials, I learned about running a company by doing it: budgets, supply chains, hiring, vision, conflict, growth. But more importantly, I learned how money and values could move in the same direction.

Throughout those years, I devoured the work of thinkers who challenged old economic assumptions and imagined more humane possibilities. I visited John Todd’s New Alchemy Institute on Cape Cod, read Paul Hawken on ecology and enterprise, absorbed Wendell Berry’s call for stewardship of land and community.

I joined a famous organic food company in California and we moved away from Florida. Moving was hard on family life. A decade later, after cross-country moves, divorce, remarriage, and a handful of entrepreneurial chapters, I stepped into the world of personal financial planning and wealth management. I brought with me the same belief I had carried since The Seven Laws of Money: that wealth is not an end point, but a means to live with greater alignment and to make the world a bit kinder, a bit more humane.

The wealth management industry was an awakening. I discovered quickly that Wall Street thrives on complexity, confusion, and the subtle training of people to feel inadequate about their own financial lives. As Thich Nhat Hanh wrote, “When we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we are caught in the worries and fears of our minds.” I saw that confusion breeds fear, and fear breeds dependence. My work became about cutting through that fog—educating, simplifying, and helping people reclaim a sense of clarity and agency.

For more than a quarter century, I helped hundreds of families gain clarity, reach goals, and become financially confident through my approach to holistic, comprehensive financial planning and values-aligned investing. Then in 2023, I retired from wealth management to focus fully on the part of my work that had always mattered most: philanthropy, purpose, and the alignment of wealth with values.

This is the heart of Aligned Giving.

Today, I work with individuals, families, and progressive nonprofits who want their generosity to mean something—who understand that giving is the outward expression of an inner story. My role is to listen deeply, to help clarify what matters most, and to design tax-smart, values-rooted strategies that bring coherence, confidence, and intention to every act of generosity. I believe that “goodness is not only a state, it is a practice.”* Philanthropy, when aligned, becomes one of those practices.

My goal is simple: to make the world a better place by helping people live and give with greater alignment, and to expand the sense of happiness, congruence, and meaning that flows from that.

*widely attributed to Paul Hawken